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Take "accelerationism" for example. Only Very Online Nerds people take the provenance of the term with Nick Land etc seriously. Nobody else gives a shit. It seems to adequately cover a swathe of positions ranging from Toffler to white nationalism to SV tech-progressivism.
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If you oppose a narrow claim to a broad label, tactically, the dumbest thing you can do is to actually accept that association. The smartest thing you can do is to let natural process of dilution, contamination and overloading expand the term to cover the full range it wants to
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My reaction to the narrow flavors (both left/right) of Accelerationism™ was "the part that is good is not new, the part that is new is not good." It's not a label I'd either accept or reject, since it is vacuous used broadly, and derpily restrictive used narrowly.
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If you actually want to bell an ideological cat, relabel it to point to people. Labels like Landism, Moldbugism, Srnicekism, Zizekism, and Bannonism are at the right level of both resolution and acknowledgement of ideological agency. Accepting a big/broad label is... silly.
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All such ideologies, when it comes down to it, are the work of 1-2 fevered imaginations working long hours for several years in the grips of some sort of highly personal axe-grinding motive, who attract a few (<15) close acolytes, constructing grand narratives to ensnare minds.
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You're entirely welcome to buy into any of these narrow cottage industry offerings, but don't pretend you're doing some sort of deep critical thinking and reasoned adoption of a big, deep intellectual movement when all you're doing is learning a few slogans and shibboleths 🙄
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Most people who claim to be "accelerationist" or whatever just learned a few sophomoric secret handshakes by spending a few weekends reading a few tens of thousands of words. Not exactly what I'd call a lived, embodied, hard-earned praxis.
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Get over yourself. You didn't go on a Journey of Self Discovery and experience some deep enlightenment. Most likely you had your normal share of personal life problems and latched on to a convenient memeplex and community, and learned enough of the memes to make a few friends.
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Big broad self-labelings or other-labelings are always a major red flag for me. Other examples, "critical theory" or even just "theory" (really??? you really think you can occupy that entire bloody cosmos-sized space?) Even subtler ones like "optimism" or "pessimism"
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SPOILER ALERT: Spider-Man: Far From Home reference coming up. Don't read on if you haven't watched it and plan to.
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In Spider-Man: Far From Home, the villain Mysterio/Quentin Beck, is a master of illusion, using tech to create highly inflated appearances. FX magic act. Reminded me of how cult-leaders use small, pretty weak actions to prop up very big semantic territory claims.
Replying to
If you just pick a couple of dozen potent words and build about 10-50k worth of writing to reprogram how people use them, you're done. You've created an illusory monster that's far bigger than your tools. The Peter Wiggin gambit in Ender's Game. Annoying just how *easy* this is
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